People search for "DOB violation class 1" expecting a severity grade. The Department of Buildings' own violation file does not have one. A DOB violation carries a type code saying what the violation is about, and a category saying where it stands. The numbered classes belong to ECB summonses, which are a different record.
The type code: what it is about
The commonest types in the city's file, with their live counts:
| Type | Subject | Records |
|---|---|---|
| E | Elevator | 713,299 |
| LL6291 | Local Law 62/91 — boilers | 598,814 |
| LBLVIO | Low pressure boiler | 319,929 |
| C | Construction | 203,396 |
| AEUHAZ1 | Failure to certify a Class 1 condition | 159,423 |
| LL1081 | Local Law 10/81 — elevator | 81,231 |
Two things stand out. Elevators and boilers dominate — they are inspected on a cycle, so they generate volume that has nothing to do with how troubled a building is. And AEUHAZ1 is the seam between the two systems: it is a DOB violation for failing to certify that an ECB Class 1 condition was corrected.
The category: where it stands
The category field folds the status into the record rather than keeping it separate:
| Category | Records |
|---|---|
| V*-DOB VIOLATION - DISMISSED | 1,166,179 |
| V*-DOB VIOLATION - Resolved | 673,516 |
| V-DOB VIOLATION - ACTIVE | 555,481 |
| VW*-VIOLATION - WORK W/O PERMIT DISMISSED | 23,487 |
| VP*-VIOLATION UNSERVED ECB - DISMISSED | 20,517 |
| VW-VIOLATION WORK WITHOUT PERMIT - ACTIVE | 12,996 |
The asterisk is the tell: a starred prefix means the matter is closed. More than 1.1 million records — the largest single group — are dismissed. Any count of "violations at this address" that does not separate active from closed is telling you very little, which is why this site counts open ones separately.
A real record
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| number | VW19 08CSTF03 |
| bin | 1085463 |
| violation_type_code | C |
| violation_type | C-CONSTRUCTION |
| violation_category | VW-VIOLATION WORK WITHOUT PERMIT - ACTIVE |
| house_number / street | 117 EAST 18 STREET |
One more trap for anyone reading the raw data: the issue date on legacy rows is not a normal date. It arrives in forms like Y30819 and T90517, a compressed encoding rather than a year-month-day. Sorting those as text does not put them in chronological order, which is a real hazard when a page claims to show the "most recent" filing.
So where are Class 1, 2 and 3?
On ECB summonses, graded by severity: Class 1 immediately hazardous, Class 2 major, Class 3 lesser. If you are looking for how serious a cited condition was, that is the record to read — see what an ECB violation is. If you are looking at apartment conditions instead, HPD uses letters and a different scale again: HPD violation classes.
Sources: NYC Department of Buildings — DOB Violations (3h2n-5cm9). Counts are live totals on the date queried. General information about public records, not legal advice.